Torque Workcentre at work.. #38: Grooving square bollards.

I was asked to make some bollards… short posts with a hole at the top to thread rope through….I picked up some 8 foot lengths of 4 inch by 4 inch treated hardwood.. cut them in half and planed them smooth..ish..Ran a piloted chamfering bit around all 4 corners and the top… sorry no pics….The 1 1/4 inch hole near the top, which was drilled with an electric drill mounted in the TWC, was also chamfered…The beauty of this set up is that the post is supported on the table….I wanted to make a V-groove all round about 6 inches from the top, so put a v-bit in the router and mounted it on the TWC

then screwed some scrap ply to the table to set a fence and stop block at the end to hold the post in position…

Set the depth stop and using the plunge control lever made a few passes until the groove was cut…

Only had to rotate each post and repeat….Due to the way the torque is set all grooves matched all the way round..

The best part for me was not having to hold the router or use a fence on the router or a straight edge that would have to be reset for each side…I also did not have to move the post… which is really heavy across a table saw or router table…A great time saver… all 4 grooves on all 6 bollards in under 5 minutes…

6 comments so far

That is quiet the machine, Larry. Wish I had the money and the space. I’ll just have to wait until a poor old Aussie throws this one away and gets a new improved one. Then I can dig it out of the scrap pile lol

hey rand i was thinking the same thing….well have to see who gets to the junk heap the fastest…..i might play dirty though..and throw you off balance by slipping you the tongue…........dont worry larry..im really ok….lol

Oh heck it looks like there’s gonna be squabbling over the scrap pile ‘cos I too was thinking that, although I was worried about getting it back to the UK I guess this machine is so versatile I could probably run up a sail with the help of shipwright & sail it homeHappy Christmas to OZ enjoy your turkey BBQ the POMS are freezingTrevor